EQ Assessments

Bar-On’s EQ-I

Used for over a decade, it was designed to assess those personal qualities that enabled some people to possess better “emotional well-being” than others. The EQ-I has been used to assess thousands of individuals. In one study the EQ-I was predictive of success for U.S. Air Force recruiters. In fact, by using the test to select recruiters, the Air Force saved nearly 3 million dollars annually.

Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale

The MEIS is a test of ability rather than a self-report measure. The test-taker performs a series of tasks that are designed to assess the person’s ability to perceive, identify, understand, and work with emotion.

Emotional Competence Inventory

The ECI is a 360 degree instrument. People who know the individual rate him or her on 20 competencies that Goleman’s research suggests are linked to emotional intelligence. Although the ECI is in its early stages of development, about 40 percent of the items come from an older instrument, the Self-Assessment Questionnaire, that was developed by Boyatzis. These earlier items had been “validated against performance in hundreds of competency studies of managers, executives, and leaders.

Another measure that has been promoted commercially is the EQ Map. Although there is some evidence for convergent and divergent validity, the data have been reported in a rather ambiguous fashion.

One other measure deserves mention, even though it is less well-known than the others. Schutte, Malouff, Hall, Haggerty, Cooper, Golden, & Dornheim have developed a 33-item self-report measure based on Salovey and Mayer’s early work.

Finally, it might be helpful to keep in mind that emotional intelligence comprises a large set of abilities that have been studied by psychologists for many years. Thus, another way to measure emotional intelligence or competence is through tests of specific abilities.

Some of these tests seem rather strong. To name just one example, there is Seligman’s SASQ, which was designed to measure learned optimism and which has been impressive in its ability to identify high performing students, salespeople, and athletes.